AMD Announces New Embedded G-Series System on Chip Platform

AMD has unveiled the embedded G-series system on chip (SoC) platform that features the next generation 'Jaguar' CPU architecture and Radeon 8000 series graphics engine. It marks the company's strategic push to markets beyond that of the PC industry.

Manufactured on the 28nm fabrication process, the new G-Series SoC is touted to offer up to thirty-three per cent reduction in footprint in comparison to the AMD G-Series Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) as the SoC has integrated the controller hub together with its CPU and GPU cores. The SoCs are available in dual- or quad-core SKUs with Radeon HD 8000 series graphics engine cores. At launch, the following SoCs are made available, there is one in particular, the GX-416RA which has no GPU.

The SoCs have power envelopes that range from 9- 25W, making these embedded chips ideal for industrial control and automation systems, as well as specialist applications such as casino gaming and infotainment kiosk systems. In addition, the G-Series SoCs supported Windows 8 Embedded and Linux that are the commonly used OSes for such dedicated hardware systems.

According to Engadget, the small ‘X’ at the bottom right corner of the G-series logo actually stands for the x86 architecture of the CPU core; while paving the way for an ARM-based CPU core variants of the SoC. AMD first announced its intentions to produce ARM architecture based Opteron processors by 2014. There weren't any details pertaining to the ARM-based G-Series SoCs; however, when they are launched, we believe that they targeted at tablet market. For now, according to one of our earlier reports, AMD is planning to launch its ultra low-power 'Temash' APUs to replace the current 'Hondo' APUs.